Dhaka South City Corporation Mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh has said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will give adequate financial support to the traders affected by Tuesday's fire at Bangabazar.
He was addressing the media after a program on Wednesday.
Earlier, on Tuesday, Bangladesh Shop Owners Association urged the government to initially allocate Tk700 crore for the small traders of the Bangabazar market to recoup their losses caused by the massive fire.
Around 5,000 shops, mostly owned by small traders, were damaged in the fire that broke out at 6:10am on Tuesday.
Mahmud Hossain Opu/Dhaka TribuneAs Eid is approaching, all the shops were full of clothes and other products which were almost completely damaged by the fire.
Goods worth over Tk2,500 crore were damaged in the fire, said the president of the association, Helal Uddin.
There are four markets – Bangabazar Market, Mahanagar Market, Adarsha Market, and Gulistan Market – in the area. People refer to all of them together as Bangabazar Shopping Complex.
Traders said about 3,000 shops in these four markets were destroyed by the fire.
The fire service has yet to fully extinguish the flames, as firefighters were still desperately trying to put out the fire at Anexco Tower at 10:29am on Wednesday.
Mehedi Hasan/Dhaka TribuneThe blaze started spreading again on Tuesday evening, after it had been brought under control just after noon.
The DSCC and the fire service have formed two separate panels to probe into the incident.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is trying to figure out the cause of the fire as well.
So far, no one has made any clear comment on the cause of the fire.
